escape--the Milk pails were either burnished brass or painted buckets, and the little straw baskets the women carried in their hands came in for their share of blue, red, or green. They have such a dread of dirt, that entrance is limited to the back door only, the opening of the front door being reserved for grand occasions, such as weddings, funerals, &c. It is not accessible by carriages and horses, on account of several canals which intersect it; these sometimes widen, and in one part the houses stand round a pretty little lake. I can give you no better idea of the scene than a Chinese paper, whose neat summer houses and painted boats are all mixed together. Most houses have each a separate garden, kept in style equally clean. I really believe my own dusty shoes were the most impure things in the whole village. We returned to Buiksloot and then proceeded to Saardam, on the top of a Dyke, which keeps the sea from inundating the vast levels of North Holland. Saardam might be held up as the pattern of neatness had I not visited Brock first; as it is, I can only say that, though four times as large, it seems to be its rival in cleanliness and paint. The number of windmills is quite astonishing; it would require an army of Don Quixotes. I counted myself upwards of 130 in and close to the town; they say there are 1,200. Windmills seem great favourites with the Dutch. In the Diligence near Utrecht my neighbour roused me by a sudden exclamation, "Oh la vue superbe!" I looked, and beheld 14 of them in a Dyke! and yesterday, on asking the Laquais de place if we should see anything curious at Saardam besides the Czar's house, he replied, "Oh que, oui--beaucoup de Moulins!" Peter the Great's house is a small wooden cottage close to the town, remarkable for nothing but having been his. [Illustration: SAARDAM. _To face page 228._]